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ANDERSONVILLE 



ANDERSONVILLE 

"By 
J. FRANK HANLY 



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Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 
New York: Eaton and Mains 



■ Ai'HZf 



Copyright, 191 2, 
By Jennings and Graham 



£CI.A300651 



DEDICATION 

OF MONUMENT ERECTED BY 
THE STATE OF INDIANA 

In Memory of the Seven Hundred and 

Two Indiana Soldiers Who Died in 

Andersonville Prison, 1864-1 865 

Unveiled December 26, 1908 

J. Frank Hanly 



ANDERSONVILLE 



Andersonville 



Mr. F resident and Gentlemen oj the 
Indiana Andersonville Monument 
Commission: 

COMMISSIONED by law 
and acting under legisla- 
tive authority duly expressed 
through the representatives of the 
people of the Commonwealth in 
which you live and for which you 
here suffered and endured almost 
half a century ago, you have caused 
to be erected here a monument to 
the memory of Indiana's soldiers 
who died here, in prison, during 
[9] 



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the Civil War, and were, and now 
are, buried here. 

You have done your work well. 
To that we, your fellow-citizens, 
who are now privileged to look 
upon it, do with one voice testify. 
You have built of granite — earth's 
most enduring substance — after a 
design so simple as to be impressive 
because of its simplicity, and so 
beautiful as to abide long in the 
memory of those who behold it. 

You have rifled the quarries of 
Wisconsin of their rarest treasures 
in texture and in color and have 
brought them here and piled them 
high in enduring tribute to the dead 
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Anderson ville 

whom in life it was your proud privi- 
lege to know and greet as comrades. 

What willing hands, what grate- 
ful hearts, what purposeful intent 
you brought to your work this 
stately shaft of granite long will 
testify. 

With what recollections of a sad 
and tragic past — a past of which 
you yourselves were once a part; 
with what yearnings of affection 
for those with whom you here shared 
the storm and stress and want of 
prison life; with what memories — - 
memories through which the cold, 
pathetic faces of the dead appear 
again as when here you looked upon 

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Andersonville 

them; with what tides of feehng; 
with what emotions of the soul, 
you now, by this unveiHng, close the 
hoHest service of your Hves — let 
loosed imagination tell. For you 
the occasion is too profound for 
words, too deep for speech. Stand- 
ing here at the grave of the buried 
valor of the race you touch depths 
of thought, of feeling, of emotion 
for which the plummet of human 
language is and forever must be in- 
adequate — depths which the deeps 
of silence alone can fathom. 

And we assembled here — a mighty 
multitude — share in high degree your 
thought, your feeling and your emo- 
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Andersonville 

tion, and with one accord pause in 
solemn awe and in breathless hush, 
and tender the tribute silence alone 
can pay to sublime and fadeless 
worth. 

You have not built for yourselves 
alone. You have built for and in 
the name of all the people of a great 
and grateful Commonwealth. This 
beautiful memorial you now tender 
to the State is but one more evi- 
dence that the services, the devo- 
tion, the courage, the fortitude, and 
the sacrifices of her sons who par- 
ticipated in the war for the solidarity 
of the Union are still held in grate- 
ful and abiding memory both by 
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their comrades and by posterity. 
Three miUion hearts are back of it; 
three million men and women — men 
and women who value liberty and 
love freedom and who revere the 
cause for which these martyrs died. 
It represents their sentiments, their 
aspirations — not languishing, dying 
sentiments, but virile, living senti- 
ments; not vague, impossible aspi- 
rations formed half in doubt and half 
in fear, but aspirations which are 
attainable and which they intend 
shall be realized. 

Indiana does not forget her dead. 
She can not forget them. They 
are unforgettable. She has builded 
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monuments to their memory at 
Chickamauga and at Gettysburg, 
at Shiloh and at Vicksburg. She 
has marked the Hnes where hving 
they struggled for the mastery of a 
foe as brave and vahant as human 
valor ever faced. She holds as sacred 
all paths their tired feet trod; all 
soil their spilled blood touched. The 
place where a Hoosier soldier fell 
and died was then and there im- 
mortalized. Though distant, deso- 
late, and common, it became grander 
far ''than all the snow-crowned sum- 
mits of the world*' — than all the 
fields baptized by royal blood. She 
can not forget them. They fought 
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Andersonville 

against the "buying of maidens," 
the ''selHng of children," against a 
cause ''that had defenders, but no 
defense." They were not ambition's 
dupes. They died for elemental 
truth. They died to save the Union. 
They died to preserve the Govern- 
ment their fathers founded. They 
died for man. They died for the 
human race, for all who were or are 
to be. They died to save from whip 
and lash ''the naked back of un- 
paid toil," to end the traffic in human 
flesh and blood. They died for the 
sanctity of woman, for the "sacred- 
ness of maternity." They died for 
liberty — for liberty for themselves — 
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Andersonville 

for liberty for an alien, helpless race. 
They died to give freedom to the 
slave that the freedom of the free 
might be secure. 

All the Nation's battlefields are 
sacred. Upon them all, men have 
died for man, for eternal, elemental 
truth. This great fact gives them 
all enduring sanctity. But this me- 
morial stands on holier ground, on 
soil more sacred than that of any 
battlefield the nation knows — 

* * * a sweeter sod 
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod " — 

the most sacred spot, save only one, 

and that in far away Palestine, in 

[17] 



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all the width and length of this 
sun-encircled earth. 

The scenes enacted here — the 
tragedies — the torture — the suffer- 
ings — the wreck — the ruin — the sor- 
row — the grief — the pathos — the 
despair — transcend those of all the 
battlefields of all the earth. Here 
the limit of human devotion, of 
human endurance, of human sacri- 
fice was reached — was reached and 
passed — reached and passed in Free- 
dom's name, in her just cause, that 
''government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people should 
not perish from the earth." 

Here the dead, giving even as 
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Ajtdersonville 

they died the ''pass- word primeval," 
He in solemn, eternal silence, 

"Sleeping the sleep that knows no break- 
ing, 
Morn of toil nor night of waking." 

Among them Indiana counts seven 
hundred and two of her own. How 
meet it is that a spot so marked 
and so immortalized should be sought 
out by her and a monument raised 
at public expense to the memory of 
her brave, intrepid sons who suffered 
here, endured and died; and that 
you, who suffered and endured with 
them, but lived, should be privileged 
to present it to her as a work begun 
and completed under your care and 
[19] 



Andersonville 

supervision. I accept it from you 
with pride and gratitude — accept it 
in her name and on behalf of her 
people, and do now dedicate it and 
declare it forever sacred to the 
memory of these transcendent dead. 
We claim for these dead none of 
the greatness majorities give or men 
confer, nor statesmanship, nor 
genius, nor brilliant parts, nor even 
learning, beyond the common pos- 
session of their countrymen. They 
were not commanders of armies — 
nor emperors nor kings. No strain 
of royal blood or of ancestral dis- 
tinction gives luster to their names. 
They were strangers to place and 
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Andersonvill 



power. They bore no titles — wore 
no rank. Neither badge nor shoul- 
der-strap distinguished them. They 
were plain and simple soldiers, taken 
on the field of battle, through war's 
mischance, with muskets in their 
hands, wearing only blouse and cap. 
But within their frail and finite 
forms there was the endurance of 
the mountains, the constancy of the 
stars. 

Measured by the standards of an 
obsequious world, they were not 
great at all. But measured by the 
standards of the eternal verities of 
life, by their love of country, their 
devotion to liberty, their concept 
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Andersonville 

of obligation, their capacity for sacri- 
fice, their courage, their endurance, 
their constancy, they were and are 
the flower and fruit of all the great 
that ever were — of the unforgettables 
of the race. They need no pedigree. 
Distinction's badge could not honor 
them. No title could add to their 
nobility. No rank increase their 
fame. Inherent greatness was theirs 
— the greatness of intrinsic worth — 
the greatness of service — the great- 
ness of sacrifice; compared with 
which conferred greatness — the 
greatness majorities bestow — the 
greatness of place and power — is 
mean and groveling. The greatness 
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A ndersonville 

of Intrinsic worth is true greatness. 
The greatness majorities confer or 
men bestow is to it as dross to re- 
fined gold, or tinsel's garish light to 
the diamond's resplendent ray. The 
robes of place are but the parapher- 
nalia in which mediocrity struts and 
plays its fool's roll — a livery with 
which it deceives itself, and losing, 
falls into oblivion. 

Man instinctively clings to life 
and abhors death. He turns from 
dissolution with fear and trembling 
and is prepared to give all material 
possessions that he may live. And 
when at last he faces ''the inevi- 
table hour," and there is no further 
[23] 



A n d e r s 72 V i 1 1 e 

retreat, no more evasion, he longs 
to die arnid the familiar scenes of 
the community where he has lived, 
within the sacred walls of his home, 
surrounded by trusted friends, by 
the wife he has loved, by the children 
he has begotten. In the agony of 
nature's dissolving ties, ere he gives 
up the ghost and sinks into the si- 
lence of the unknown, he yearns to 
sense the clinging clasp of friend- 
ship's hands, to feel upon his pallid 
brow affection's falling tear, and 
upon his livid lips ^'love's last and 
holiest kiss." 

It is this instinctive love of life, 
this universal dread of death, this 
[24] 



Andersonville 

longing to die, when die we must, 
surrounded with famihar scenes and 
by those we love, that gives dis- 
tinction to the sacrifice and crowns 
with glory the vicarious atonement 
of those who die in battle, amid the 
tragic scenes of war, in strange lands, 
on distant fields, for some great cause 
whose issue involves the destiny of 
every land and race. 

So died our soldier dead on every 
field from Sumter to Appomattox. 
Their fame is as fadeless as their 
death was sublime. Freely do we 
confess the debt we owe them. 
Proudly do we proclaim the love 
we bear them. And yet they were 
[25] 



Andersonville 

less heroic than the dead about us 
here, their sacrifices less exalted and 
less agonizing. 

They met death amid the crash 
of arms and the roar of cannon; 
amid the cries and cheers of fighting, 
supporting comrades; amid the rush 
and attack of armies; amid the 
grandeur and the sublimity of battle; 
amid the storm and chaos of deadly 
strife; amid the whirlwind of the 
frenzied charge; amid war's wild, 
mad delirium; in the vigor of stal- 
wart manhood; in the flush of a 
strength new-found, born of the in- 
spiration of numbers, of heroic en- 
vironment, and of great occasion, 
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Andersonville 

with power to strike and kill in 
return for every thrust or wound 
received. 

But they who died here upon this 
sacrificial altar met death in more 
hateful, . dreadful form than that 
found on any battlefield — 

Death that came of exposure, of 
cold that froze, of heat that 
scorched — 

Death that came of famine, of 
hunger unappeased, of thirst un- 
satisfied — 

Death that came of infection from 
filth, from putrid food, from pol- 
luted water, soil, and air — 

Death that came of disease and 
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Andersonvtlle 

pestilence from which there was no 
flight, no escape, within insurmount- 
able prison walls — 

Death that came of cruelties born 
of sectional hate, cruelties atrocious 
and indescribable — 

Death that came of idiocy and of 
insanity, of madness begotten by 
hope sickened into despair — 

Death that came to broken bodies, 
bodies beaten, bruised, and cursed, 
eaten by scurvy, affected to putre- 
faction by gangrene — 

Death in an abyss of pain — pain 
of the flesh, of the brain, of the soul! 

Here they waited, waited, and 
endured — they who had known the 
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joy of liberty, the ecstasy of free- 
dom — 

Waited amid privation profound as 
want, imperious as hunger, insati- 
able as thirst — 

Waited with cracked and bleed- 
ing lips, with parched and swollen 
tongues, with imploring, tear-filled 
eyes — 

Waited in the lowest depths of 
misery, amid a festival of death — 

Waited through the midnight of 
despair, amid a gloom into which 
hope had ceased to come — 

Waited with indomitable spirit, 
with unfaltering front, with con- 
stancy unwavering — 
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Andersonville 

Waited until death, grinning, 
mocking death, famine-eyed and 
skeleton-formed, became, in the re- 
lief it brought, merciful as pity — 

Waited when they could have 
gone and lived, by simply taking 
Treason's offered oath — 

Waited and would not go — 

Waited and died! 

But in dying so they climbed to 
the pinnacles of human greatness, 
reached heights of character only 
touched by holy light, glorified ob- 
scurity forever, and ''filled oblivion 
with honor." 

They died, died in prison. Even 
the names of many of them are un- 
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Andersonville 

known. Individual sepulcher was 
denied them. It was supposed their 
formless, uncoffined dust would 
mingle with the elements and their 
burial-place be forgotten. But the 
Nation has sought it out and half 
a hundred monuments mark the 
spot. ''Sown in weakness, raised in 
power!" At last the glory and the 
triumph is theirs, theirs forever. 
The cause for which they died is 
enthroned; the temple they defended, 
preserved. Slavery is dead. Free- 
dom lives. The constellation of the 
Union remains in the sky, its splen- 
dor filling the earth. The severed 
land is reunited. The solidarity of 
[31] 



Andersonville 

the Republic is established; its sov- 
ereignty admitted. The Nation 
sweeps from the smoke and flame 
of war into the calm of cloudless 
peace. The flag they loved — grown 
in beauty and in meaning — flies all 
the seas and is hailed w4th acclaim 
and honor in every land. Beneath 
its folds ninety millions of people 
stand secure and free. Wounds are 
healed; animosities forgotten. For- 
giveness reigns in every heart. 

Aye, theirs is the glory and the 
triumph. They held aloft the torch 
and unfaltering led the way, and 
the hills, the everlasting hills, lifted 
up their gates and let them in. 



Andersonville 

After forty-four 3^ears their in- 
animate dust becomes articulate; 
their mute lips utter speech; their 
dumb tongues burst into song; their 
inspired voices ''rise to all eternity.'* 
The Nation hears, enthralled; and 
hearing, interprets the deathless mes- 
sage; and interpreting, rises in char- 
acter, in concept, and in purpose. 
All hear — comrades and enemies — 
friends and foes — the imprisoned and 
the free — the writers of story, of his- 
tory, and of song — the learned and 
great — the humble and the proud — 
the toilers in mines and fields and 
shops, on land and sea — all, all be- 
neath the flag — hear and rise in 
answer. f 33 1 



Andersonville 

Colonel Jones, in behalf of the 
State of Indiana, a State whose 
loyalty and devotion to the Union 
was evidenced by the spilled blood 
of her children on every battlefield 
where the Government was attacked 
— by the more than seven hundred 
of her dead who lie in graves about 
you here, unshrouded and uncof- 
fined — I present this monument to 
you — present it to you in her name, 
in the name of her people, in the 
name of her soldier sons, living and 
dead — that it may be kept and main- 
tained while the Union of the States 
endures, a perpetual memorial to 
the love she bears the dead ensepul- 
chered here. [ 34 ] 



Andersonville 

In building it and in presenting 
it we seek or mean offense to none. 
We come into this Commonwealth — - 
urn of their consecrated dust — not 
enemies, but friends; not in anger, 
but in charity. We know the cruel- 
ties out of which their sacrifices 
came, but we know, too, the pitiless 
character of the awful war of which 
these sacrifices were a part — that 
the times themselves were out of 
joint — and knowing this, we not 
only ''gratefully remember," but 
we ''gratefully forget.'* 



[35 



